


Make Me Understand

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Biting, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Marking, No Lube, Possessive Behavior, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Top!Marcus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:26:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13514787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: Tomas glances over at Marcus, who is still sitting next to him and watching his face with the same curious, probing intensity he uses on the possessed. He looks exhausted, as he always does, and the gummy worm bag is still scrunched up in one hand. Tomas feels the overwhelming urge to kiss him.





	Make Me Understand

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy my attempt at writing rough sex between two men who canonically treat each other with only the utmost reverence and tenderness.

Tomas stumbles through the door at half-past ten, the midsummer wind at his back and the rustling of cornstalks filling the murky night air behind him. He had been out for nearly an hour, and something in the wind had made him feel ill. An allergen, maybe, or perhaps it was only the sour-sweet smell of Minnesota farmland that made his throat tighten. That, and the memory of this afternoon’s exorcism.

Tomas enters the motel room with a straining grocery bag on one arm, and finds Marcus kneeling by the open window, praying the rosary over his open Bible. The night outside is as black as a tar pit. Tomas can hear the rustling of corn a mere arm’s length away from the sill, but he can’t see it in the gloom.

He shuts the door behind him with his foot and goes to drop the bag on the bedside table, careful not to rustle it and disturb Marcus’ prayer. _“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women,”_ Marcus whispers into his hands, well-worn words that have proved a comfort and a blessing to him time and time again.

Tomas sits on the edge of the bed and starts unloading things: packaged sandwiches, bottled water, a new roll of bandages, ibuprofen, toothpaste, shaving cream. Tomas had deliberated for a while over the question of disposable razors, as he had yet to master Marcus’ straight razor, but ultimately he had to agree with Marcus; a good straight razor lasted for years, and the cost of the disposable ones added up.

The last things out of the bag are a gas station pizza and a bag of sour gummy worms, which Tomas leaves on the table before going to the bathroom to throw away the bag. He unbuttons his collar while he’s there, and comes back to find Marcus, still praying, _“. . ._ _forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have the most need of your mercy. Amen.”_

Marcus stretches; a languid, expansive movement that seems to lengthen his whole body. Then he sighs, glances up to look at Tomas, in the act of putting his collar away in his bag. Marcus smiles. “Everything go well?”

“Yeah,” says Tomas, sitting down on the edge of the bed again. There’s no reason to think that everything wouldn’t have gone well, but it means a lot to him that Marcus cares to ask. “I bought pizza.”

“Tasty.”

“And those gummy worms you like.”

“Shut up, you’re taking the piss,” Marcus says playfully, standing up and coming to sit beside Tomas. He reaches across Tomas’ lap and plucks the packet off the bedside table. “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” says Tomas. Marcus doesn’t mention their budget, for which Tomas is privately grateful. Tonight of all nights, he had wanted to see Marcus smile.

Marcus peels open the bag and eats three gummy worms at once, holding them in his mouth for a moment before starting to chew. He gives Tomas a warm look and pats his leg, giving Tomas’ knee a little squeeze. “You alright?”

“Yes,” Tomas says. The furrowing of Marcus’ brow means he knows Tomas is lying.

“It’s about what happened earlier, isn’t it,” he says, mouth still full. It’s not a question. “You can’t keep doing this, Tomas.”

The unspoken refrain, _I killed a man so you wouldn’t have to do this anymore,_ lingers in the air between them. Not five hours ago, Tomas had let a demon slip into his imagination and take it for a joyride. Just as he’d done the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that.

“I know,” Tomas mutters, staring at the floor. “I know, I know, I know. But Wells is alive, and even uninjured, because of what I did. That’s what matters.”

Taylor Wells had been thirty-eight, but looked younger. He had a good job at a steel mill, and a pregnant fiancé who loved him dearly. He had been a good man, well-liked, and if Marcus and Tomas hadn’t stepped in, he would have been dead or integrated before his thirty-ninth birthday.

The demon had looked like a purple butterfly, flitting around Wells’ head like a cartoon bird. Tomas had whispered _come here_ , and the butterfly had flitted into his right eye, and shown him a vision.

It was almost pleasant, this time around. The visions were getting easier and easier to bear. He had calloused his soul against them.

Tomas had dreamed of steaming hot asphalt, stretching miles in every direction. It had been poured out sloppy and uneven, like fresh volcanic rock, and when Tomas tried to move, he found that the rubber on the soles of his boots had melted. It latched his feet to the asphalt like strings of black gum.

The sky was the ugly, greasy gray of early mornings in Chicago.

A hand in a black leather glove had gripped his throat, squeezed it until he couldn’t breathe, and an oily voice had whispered . . .

Tomas glances over at Marcus, who is still sitting next to him and watching his face with the same curious, probing intensity he uses on the possessed. He looks exhausted, as he always does, and the gummy worm bag is still scrunched-up in one hand. Tomas feels the overwhelming urge to kiss him.

Marcus sighs wearily, and sets the nearly-full bag down on the bedside table. “Whatever it said to you, Tomas . . . we don’t listen. We can’t listen. We tape their mouths shut if we have to and we do our jobs,” He stands up, and goes to tug the curtains shut. It does nothing to silence the rustling of the corn.

Tomas watches him move across the room, not with his usual languid grace, but with sharp, precise movements. “Are you angry with me?”

“Yes.”

A dull, unpleasant weight settles in the pit of Tomas’ stomach. He looks at the ground, and swallows. “I have to do this,” he says slowly. “I have to let them in. I know how to fight them off, how not to get hurt.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Of course I trust you, Tomas,” Marcus sighs, leaning against the far wall. He rubs his forehead. “It’s you who can’t trust yourself.”

“What?” says Tomas, incredulous.

“I know what you think about after an exorcism. You think, _what if I hadn’t been strong enough?_ And one day you won’t be.”

“You’re right,” says Tomas, standing up and crossing the room. “You’re right, I know that one day, I’ll let the wrong one in, and I won’t be able to fight it off. I know this. But my way is the way that works, Marcus. Sometimes it doesn’t even take days to cast out an unclean spirit. Sometimes it only takes hours.”

He hears Marcus say his name, but Tomas isn’t listening to him. “I’m willing to suffer,” he continues. “I knew what I was doing when I became an exorcist.”

“Tomas!” Marcus shouts.

Tomas stops talking, thunderstruck.

Marcus takes a moment to breathe and collect himself. Tomas can see his fist clenching and unclenching at his side. He looks like he’s about to cry. “Tomas,” Marcus says again, quieter this time. “I killed a man to keep you safe.”

“God, why did you have to say that . . .”

“And you know what else?”

“The things you say to me . . .”

“I would do it again.”

 _“No,”_ Tomas says through gritted teeth, panic rising in his voice. “You can’t . . . you can’t _say_ those things to me, Marcus . . .”

They’re close now, much too close, and Tomas feels the urge to grip the front of Marcus’ sweater and tug him closer. Whether to hurt him or kiss him, Tomas doesn’t know, but it would be enough to touch him. To feel him move under his hands and to know that Marcus is human.

“Yes I can,” Marcus says fiercely, “and I fucking mean them. Do you _want_ this to go on? Do you _enjoy_ it, is that it?”

“I told you, I am willing!”

“That’s not what I asked!

“No, then!” Tomas cries. His breathing starts to hitch as his speaks. _No, not now, don’t lose yourself now._ “No! I _hate_ it, Marcus, I . . . I feel so fucking filthy afterwards. I don’t enjoy it, of course I don’t . . .” Tomas’ voice trails off into a hiccupy silence, and he angrily wipes his eyes, his mouth. “This is foolish,” he says, scowling bitterly. “The pizza’s getting cold.”

“Tomas,” Marcus says shakily, and Tomas keeps his gaze fixed on his chest, doesn’t dare look up, because he knows Marcus is crying too. “I’m not going to let them fuck with your head anymore.”

“That is not an option.”

“Yes it fucking is.”

“Have you heard nothing I’ve said?” Tomas stammers, his words somewhat undermined by an angry sniff. “Now more than ever, we need this. We are saving lives.”

“I was saving lives before you were a _gleam in your dad’s eye,_ Tomas.”

“Well, _I_ am saving them now,” Tomas shoots back. “Me and my suffering,” he adds ruefully.

Marcus gives him an incredulous, devastated look. “You don’t need me then, is that it?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Oh, you didn’t?”

“Marcus . . .”

“Listen to me, _cariño,”_ Marcus says angrily, placing his hands firmly on Tomas’ shoulders. Tomas feels immediately weak at the knees. “Whether you like it or not, I am not letting a demon piss about in your skull ever again, do you hear me?”

“Marcus!” Tomas protests.

 _“You’re not listening!”_ Marcus roars desperately. “I’m fucking _terrified,_ Tomas! I’m terrified, and I hate this, and I’m sick to my fucking stomach that they’re going to take you away from me, but I swear on my _fucking worthless life_ that they’re not going to. _Do you understand?”_

The silence in the room is deafening.

They’re close enough for Tomas to feel Marcus’ breath on his face.

“Make me understand,” Tomas whispers. His heart is still pounding in his chest, from fear and anger and something else entirely.

Tomas sees Marcus' eyes widen just before he crushes their mouths together, making Tomas growl at the back of his throat. He opens his mouth to let Marcus lick into it, deepening the kiss, and clings one-handed to the neck of Marcus’ sweater. Marcus’ knee finds its way between Tomas’ legs, and Tomas starts rubbing his erection against his thigh, thoughtlessly at first, then intentionally.

Marcus buries his hands in Tomas’ hair and holds him still, feeding on his mouth like a man who hasn’t eaten in days. His mouth still tastes like sugar and citrus. Tomas tastes something else, something warm and coppery, and realizes that Marcus has cut his tongue against Tomas’ teeth and hasn’t noticed.

 _This is My body, and My blood,_ he thinks, and the thought makes a shudder of pleasure run through him. Marcus feels it, and holds him tighter, his hands slipping down Tomas’ neck, then his shoulders, only to settle at his hips and grip him hard enough to bruise.

Marcus breaks their kiss and bares his teeth when he feels Tomas’ rutting grow more insistent. He moves his leg- to Tomas’ frustration- and begins to steer him roughly backward towards the bed. Tomas lets himself be steered, too busy fumbling with his own shirt buttons to care how he’s handled.

The backs of his knees hit the bed and Marcus pushes him backwards, landing Tomas on his back with a heavy _fwump._ “Oh,” he breathes, looking up at Marcus as he stands over him, tugging his sweater off over his head. “God, you’re beautiful.”

“Your shirt,” Marcus growls as he fumbles with his belt. “Your trousers, everything.”

Tomas, who is already halfway through unbuttoning his shirt, yanks it off over his head in frustration. He undresses with none of his usual fastidiousness; not tonight, not when he’s so desperate to feel Marcus’ skin against his, and the nourishment of his kisses. When Marcus has finally stripped himself, and crawls onto the bed to loom over him on all fours, Tomas feels like the willing mate of some wild, untamed thing. He wonders vaguely if Marcus can smell his desire.

Marcus kisses him roughly, and starts to grind their erections together. “I would die for you,” he whispers hoarsely. “God, Tomas, I would move Heaven and earth for you.”

Tomas digs his fingernails into Marcus’ back and whimpers, his cock already dripping from the attention. When Marcus shifts a little above him, and Tomas realizes he’s leaving to get the oil from their bag, Tomas’ hand snaps out and grips Marcus’ wrist. “No,” he says breathlessly, and Marcus stills, his eyes wide.

“No?” he says, very quietly.

Tomas nods.

Marcus nods shakily, and bites his lip. “On your belly,” he says finally, and God, there’s nothing Tomas wouldn’t do for that voice.

Obediently, he scoots out from under Marcus, and groans in pleasure as Marcus takes him by the waist and flips him over. Marcus’s hands slide down to his hips and he cants them up towards him with a satisfied purr. Tomas tugs a pillow closer and buries his face in it, feeling very, very exposed.

Marcus covers his mouth with his hand- always shy about spitting audibly, even in bed- and then brings it down to stroke his cock. The sound is wet and too loud in their cramped motel room; Marcus had always leaked more than Tomas, and his cock is slick and eager when he rubs it against Tomas’ entrance.

“No one else has made love to you like this,” Marcus growls, his hand slipping down Tomas’ spine to rub small circles in the small of his back. “Only _I_ have.”

“Yes,” Tomas breathes, “only you.” _This, at least, is yours._

It had devastated him, the first time they’d made love, to know that he was Marcus’ first but Marcus was not his own. Tomas had only voiced this private pain weeks later, when they had lain in bed in the early hours of a Sunday morning, their fingers tracing little crosses on each other’s chests. _“I wish I could give you more.” “Don’t talk like that, luv, don’t you fucking talk like that. Come here,”_ and they had kissed until dawn.

Marcus’ braces his arms against the bed, penning Tomas in on either side. Tomas shuts his eyes tight; he can hear Marcus’ lusty breathing behind his back.

He eases in slowly at first, but it doesn’t stop the pain. Tomas gasps and twitches under him. “Don’t stop,” Tomas pants against the bedsheets when Marcus pauses. _I want it to hurt,_ he doesn’t say, but Marcus hears it in the spaces between his words, and he pushes in deeper, deeper, till Tomas is split open and mewling in pleasure-pain.

It always hurts on the first thrust, but their bodies have learned each other by now, and Tomas fits him so well. Marcus has praised him for it a thousand times in private, amorous murmurs. _You pull me in deep before tightening around me, as if you don’t want me to go._

This last is always confided in a tremulous whisper, and Tomas kisses the words from his mouth. _I don’t want you to go, I never want you to go._

Marcus shudders as he seats himself fully in his lover, and Tomas clenches his teeth and lets out a shaky sigh. This invasion is a million miles away from a demon’s probing visions; this is something raw, and claiming, and older than sin. Mankind was making love before sin was even conceived of, and Tomas is reminded powerfully of it now.

Marcus doesn’t start slowly. Not tonight. Tomas groans as he starts thrusting into him, and for a moment the quiet of their bedroom is broken by the slick noise of skin against skin, and the wet, undignified sounds Tomas’ entrance makes as Marcus takes his pleasure. “God, Tomas,” Marcus breathes. “F-fuck . . .”

He starts up a punishing rhythm that makes Tomas have to bite his lip to keep from screaming. The pleasure-pain of it is indescribable, the pain fading all the while and the pleasure mounting with every thrust. Marcus fucks like he wants to give Tomas a child, grips his hips and carves out a place for himself inside Tomas, deep in the hot, wet center of him. The point of their connection aches with a kind of throbbing pleasure that makes a little buzz of white noise start up in the back of Tomas’ skull.

Marcus’ hands slip up Tomas’ skin, till one is on his belly and the other on his chest. Marcus lays himself flat along Tomas’ back and Tomas lets out a huff of exertion as he feels Marcus’ weight pressing down on him. Skin to skin and chest to back. _Oh God,_ Tomas thinks deliriously, _closer, closer. Why can’t we crawl into each other’s chests and live there._

Marcus’ grip is vice-like, unwilling to let go as he thrusts into Tomas’ heat. “I love you,” Marcus groans. Tomas can feel his damp breath on the back of his neck. “I love you so much.”

Tomas whines as Marcus digs his fingernails into his skin, drawing them slowly down his chest. He can’t get words out, he’s so overcome, and settles for grabbing one of Marcus’ hands and lacing their fingers together. He squeezes like he’s trying to break the bones in Marcus’ hand, and hopes he understands.

“I’m not . . .” Marcus gasps, his voice cracking as he pulls out slowly and thrusts back in. “I’m not going . . . to let them touch you . . . ever again, Tomas, are you listening to me . . .”

“Oh God, Marcus . . .”

“You are a _child of God,_ and you are _His,_ and you are _mine,_ and they can’t do a fucking thing to change that. _Do you understand me yet?”_

These last few words are punctuated with deep, claiming thrusts that make Tomas see stars. He bunches the bedsheets tightly in his fist, and nods.

“Say it,” Marcus insists in his ear. _“Say it.”_

“They . . . are never going to get me,” Tomas chokes. He squeezes his eyes shut, wills himself not to cry again. “They’re never going to fucking get me.”

“That’s right,” Marcus growls, and there’s desperation in his voice now. “They’re never going to fucking get you. Never.”

“They’re never . . .”

“Never, so help me God . . .”

“Going to fucking get me . . .”

Marcus presses his hips flush against Tomas’ thighs and snarls into Tomas’ skin. He begins to nip at his neck, cautiously at first, then harder. “They can’t,” he snarls, “they won’t, because I’ve got you,” _thrust,_ “right here,” _thrust,_ “safe,” _thrust,_ “in my bed.”

Tomas tries to speak, but the words don’t come out right, not with Marcus murmuring nonsense to him in between fierce kisses to Tomas’ neck. “What are you trying to say,” Marcus breathes against Tomas’ neck, because damn him, he always wants to know.

“I love you,” Tomas manages to get it out through gritted teeth. “I love you.”

Marcus growls, and starts suckling hard against the soft skin of Tomas’ throat. He pulls away, gasping for breath. “I’m sorry,” he says, and Tomas can already feel a bruise welling up where Marcus’ lips had kissed him. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“It’s fine,” Tomas gasps, beyond pain, beyond caring. “My collar will hide it.”

Tomas clings to the sheets and gasps as Marcus’ teeth dig into his neck again, his back arching in ecstasy. He can feel sweet tension building in every limb, his climax so tantalizingly close, but God, if he comes, it will all be over. He wants nothing more than to stay like this, held down and subjected to Marcus’ adoring brutalization. For once, his body used by someone worthy of it.

Tomas tries to cry out, to tell Marcus he’s close, but Marcus can feel it in the tension of his muscles and his hand has already slipped between his legs. The callouses on his hands are rough on the sensitive skin of Tomas’ cock, and Tomas’ gasp devolves into a low, needy whine as he starts to thrust into Marcus’ palm.

“That’s it,” Marcus stammers in awe, as though witnessing something divine. His thrusts grow eager, more erratic. “That’s my boy. I want you to come, come into my hand. God, you’re so fucking beautiful . . .”

Marcus’ voice in Tomas’ ear pushes him over the edge, and he lets out a strangled scream as Marcus fucks the orgasm out of him. He spends himself in Marcus’ palm in two thick, white ropes, and he hears Marcus’ sharp intake of breath just before he bites down hard between Tomas’ neck and shoulder and buries himself in Tomas as deeply as he’ll go.

Tomas can feel Marcus’ cock throb inside him when he comes. Then the warm, wet sensation of being filled.

 _“Tomas,”_ Marcus groans weakly, his voice cracking. _“My . . . Tomas . . .”_

His strength leaves him all at once, wrung out of him by the exertion, and Marcus lets himself rest heavily against Tomas’ back. Tomas hums in pleasure and lets his eyes flutter closed, enjoying the sound of Marcus’ exhausted breathing, and the smell of sex that has thickened the air around them.

Tomas realizes that their hands are still tightly laced together. It doesn’t even occur to him to let go.

They lie there in silence as their heartbeats slow. Marcus occasionally brushes feather-light kisses against Tomas’ neck, but Tomas is too blissfully tired to move. Eventually Marcus eases out of him, bracing himself against the bed with both arms in order to do so, and Tomas lets out an embarrassing little back-of-the-throat noise when Marcus slips free. He feels the loss more acutely than he thought he would; like someone had reached inside him and removed some vital, life-giving thing. He feels marked, more thoroughly than a demon could ever mark him.

Marcus settles in next to him, on his side, and pulls Tomas close. Tomas tucks his head just under Marcus’ chin, and lets Marcus run his hand through his hair, and down the back of his neck. Again, and again, and again, until Tomas’ eyes close, and his breathing steadies. Marcus reaches down, pulls the covers up and over them as if that will do a thing to protect them.

“I like the way you smell,” says Tomas in a very small voice.

 _“Eau de Motel Soap,”_ Marcus says, making Tomas huff a laugh against his skin. “The same stuff you use.”

“Then I like that we smell like each other.”

Marcus doesn’t say anything, but his arms tighten around Tomas, and they fall asleep wrapped around each other like hands clasped in prayer.


End file.
